"What's your wish for the new year?"

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I sat with a group of mostly college students, all of them women, as they talked about what was going on in their lives. One’s boyfriend was due home from Iraq in a couple of weeks. Another was trying to make her life more purposeful. And another had quit smoking.

“I just decided to quit,” she said. “I quit cold turkey—no patch, no pills, no gum. I just quit. And it was hard,” she said, “I mean I’ve been smoking for seven years. It’s what I do. I smoke. I’m a smoker. And my friends don’t understand. They ask me for my lighter and I say, ‘I quit.’ And they say, ‘What?’ They ask to bum a cigarette and I say, ‘I quit.’ And they say, ‘Why?’”

She went on to say, “I know I’m doing the right thing, but it sure is hard.”

Doing the right thing is hard, isn’t it? Even if your old behaviors are killing you or make you miserable, they’re still familiar, aren’t they? And the people around still expect you to be that way, don’t they?

Yes, doing the right thing is hard, but it’s well worth the effort. Resolve to do the right thing in 2010 as you listen to life and make a life, not just a living.

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